Adult learning is more than alternative education, self-help, self-study, or training. Self-directed inquiry can free you from the cultural traps of today’s postmodern world. When you think for yourself, you take control of your life. Intellectual ability and critical thinking soon become substitutes for paper credentials. Simply stated aggressive learning is the most practical guide to a passionately rewarding life.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Not the Country I Grew Up In

Now in my eighth decade, I
find that my confidence in America’s future no longer resembles the enthusiasm
I grew up experiencing in the 1940s and ’50s. My first job in 1956 was a paper
route delivering the Dallas Morning News.
My district manager’s name was John Galt. He was an affable man who seemed to
work hard, but he was not without faults that were obvious, even to a teenager.
The very next year, Ayn Rand would publish Atlas
Shrugged, featuring a flawless fictional capitalist character also named
John Galt. I didn’t get the irony until years later.

More than two decades would
pass before I read Atlas Shrugged, but
one thing became immediately clear when I did: there are no such persons with the
virtue Rand attributed to John Galt, her ideal man. There are, however, plenty
of wannabes, and America is increasingly a greed-based plutocracy that reeks of
the ethos of selfishness, while the growing disparity between the super-rich
and the middle class is rapidly becoming grotesque.

In the first three years
after the 2008 economic downturn, 95 percent of income went to the top one
percent of the population, while the gap today between executive compensation
and the hourly pay of blue-collar workers makes a mockery of the very idea of fairness.
The current state of inequality brings to mind an observation by former Supreme
Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “We can have a democratic society or we can have
great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”

In the 1950s, income tax
rates were extraordinarily high, over 90 percent, but few people actually paid
the top rates. Business owners avoided the high tax rate by reinvesting heavily
in their enterprises. America’s high wages and rapidly growing middle class
were the envy of the world. Working for one company and receiving a gold watch
upon retirement was accepted as being doable if that was your goal. Career
expectations for people willing to apply themselves and work hard were wildly
optimistic.

America was making huge
infrastructural investments in the 1950s with an interstate highway system,
rural electrification, the GI Bill, and the FHA for home mortgages. There was
an explosive increase in affordable housing and a boom in manufacturing. In the
arena of science and engineering we were on the threshold of going to the moon.

At the same time, though,
our society in the ’40s and ’50s was sexist and overtly racist. We saw
segregated housing, residential redlining, and egregiously unfair employment
opportunities for women and minorities. Voting rights for minorities were
threatened by poll taxes and excessive difficulties in registering.

In those days, we were
not commonly aware of a psychologically devious self-deception at work in our
own minds, and we failed to take into account the fact we see mostly what we
want to see and what we expect to see. We didn’t understand the psychological
dynamics of bias. We thought what we were experiencing was straight-up reality.
Sadly, even now, many people still don’t get it.

In the decades since that
time, lifespans have increased and medical miracles are now taken for granted.
We have Dick Tracy communication abilities and are one click away from more
information than was ever thought possible. Technologies make our lives easier than
our ancestors could have dreamed.

And yet, today, the
expectation of long-term employment is history. Unions are dying off. Good-paying
factory jobs are going the way of the buffalo. There is a resurgent threat to
voting rights in what we now call red states. Working conditions have improved,
but women and minorities still do not receive equal treatment in employment.

Automation is decimating
the job market. Low-wage jobs are growing like weeds, and taxpayers are having
to supplement wages for workers in some of the biggest and most profitable
companies in America. It’s not unusual for people to juggle several part-time
jobs because they can’t find full-time employment, while major employers are
allowed to set reduced hours specifically to avoid paying additional benefits
for full-time workers.

Productivity is going up
as wages stagnate or go down. Individuals making $10,000 an hour are crying
crocodile tears because working people are asking for $10 per hour. Corporate
executives whine incessantly about America having high tax rates, even though most
corporations pay nothing close to the maximum rate because of loopholes
legislated by paid lobbyists. Many create headquarters in a foreign county to
escape taxes altogether.

A cracker-box house in
many of our big cites will cost from $700k to over $1 million, while a 30-year
mortgage is a bigger risk than ever before. Even among families with health
insurance, a serious disease will likely bankrupt most because of the necessary
copay. Homelessness is a growth enterprise, as are tent-shack encampments, itinerant
shelters, food pantries, soup kitchens, gated communities, and private security
companies.

The financial sector is
increasingly parasitic. Whereas it used to specialize in lending money for
startups, it now just siphons off the investmentcream with supercomputers. Ideologues cheer them on as if they
have something to do with the idiotic notion of excellence. The credit card
industry is increasingly predatory, while the payday loan industry could teach
the mob a thing or two.

Our infrastructure is
crumbling. Regardless of the fact that we are nearly $3 trillion behind in
required maintenance, those on the extreme right of the GOP are looking for
ways to lower taxes. This, in my view, makes these folks the biggest
something-for-nothing crowd ever.

Meanwhile, even though
the basic social employment contract has been gutted, voices on the Right still
whine about a deficit of moral virtue, as if all people have to do is just
start acting responsible. They seem to think if that were to happen, then
tomorrow the old jobs would be back and everything would be just fine. Not so.
They won’t admit that the playing field has changed beyond recognition.

For a fraction of what we
spend on a bloated military, college educationcould be free and we could have a social safety net that, instead
of being punitive, could actually reward initiative. But to do such things remains
beyond our reach with so many of our citizens living in mortal fear that some
poor fool is going to get something at their expense.

All the while, corporate
executives are hauling off money by the wheelbarrow load with a thumb up for
success. Wannabes genuflect in approval as they dream of getting their own
wheelbarrow load and joining the club.

The economic statistics
over the past half-century tell the story of what has happened to America in a
clinical sense, but if you want to get a personal feel for the troubling
conditions we find ourselves in, Bob Herbert’s Losing Our Way is a brilliant account in terms of the human cost of
growing inequality.

To me, the most
disturbing aspect of this whole scenario is that it took me so long to see this
hypocrisy and pretention for what they amount to, namely tribalism. We’re witnessing
tribalism on steroids as groups try to prove their superiority over everyone
else. Because of what they believe is stellar behavior, they deem their kind to
be worthy while others aren’t. It’s that simple.

Reversing our escalating
inequality, however, is anything but simple. Instead of paying attention to the
politics that directly affect their lives, millions of our citizens cling to
clichéd versions of an American Dream mythology that have been sold short by
Wall Street interests.

The people with the power
to rig the system own the politicians of both parties and the major media sources
that influence the general public. The richest one percent now own almost half
of the world’s wealth, and their rate of ownership increases annually.

To wrest power away from
those who have spent the last three decades purchasing favorable legislation
and who have now been given the ability to buy elections by none other than the
United States Supreme Court, at times seems impossible. Let’s hope it’s not too
late to recreate a more equitable society.

Both liberals and
conservatives are likely to agree that the economic trajectory we are currently
on is not sustainable and that rising inequality shows no signs of abating. The
shame of the matter is that while solutions may not be simple, all it would
take to solve most of our economic problems is for people on all sides of the
political divide to care more about solutions than whose side gets credit.

George, Thank you. It's a question that bedevils me and I wish I had a good answer. In the book September University I make a case that as more and more of our citizens age, they are more likely to speak their minds. I still believe it, but the times we are living in are depressing because there is still so much indifference.

I think there is hope in millenials - they seem to be growing in their consciousness and the debt they are incurring in college is starting to wake them up - they should be protesting on college campuses everywhere about the cost and ineffectiveness of higher education. I would join them as a senior citizen.

George, I hope you are right. Demanding a college degree for employment and then having to incur a lifetime of debt for an education that won't pay enough to retire the loan is a national disgrace in my view.

I really wish I had found this site years ago.George, have hope! The increase of internet based business has the potential to save us. The inherent flexibility and diversity of online industry invites critical thinking... we have learned to be skeptical of online opinion - much more so than print or televised opinion. When everyone is granted a voice, by necessity, one must cull the uninformed or ignorant noise that some call opinion.Charles, I wish I could find a copy of an article I wrote a few years ago that addressed the questionable investment that we call higher education. Required textbooks and frivolous republication are definitely examples of mafia-style extortion. I just wish it hadn't taken me 6 years and $20,000 in student loans to figure out formal education was not designed with me in mind. Degree plans are much too limiting and are devoid of any practical context.